Christmas: Time of peace or time of conflict?

Although I’m on leave, I agreed to preach yesterday during a Christmas church service. Trying to get away from the normal passage that people preach about on Christmas, I decided to prepare my sermon from Revelations 12. What I tried to indicate through this sermon is that Christmas did NOT bring peace (at least not in the sense that we tend to understand it), but that it rather brought conflict.
Revelations 12 is the story of the birth of Jesus Christ. But where Luke 2 tells us the story from a human point of view, Revelations 12 tells the story from a spiritual point of view. Or we could say that Luke 2 shows us what was happening on stage while Revelations 12 tells us what was happening behind the scenes.
Revelations 12 starts off by telling us that a woman was pregnant. Most commentaries agree that this woman represents the church. This woman is covered in glory (sun, moon and stars). But the woman is not alone. Standing in front of her, ready to devour the child as soon as it is born, is the dragon, also known as the devil or Satan. Ans so we see that, in spite of the message of the angels about peace on earth, there is a fierce battle going on. Fortunately the Father steps in and the Son is snatched up to the throne of God immediately after being born.
Afterwards the dragon focusses his attention on the woman (church) in order pursue her. However, the church is also protected by God. When the dragon realises that his attempts to harm the church is futile, he shifts his attention towards the believers in an attempt to harm them.
What touched me as I was busy preparing, was that the expected result of the birth of Christ was not peace all over earth, but that His birth rather led to a continuous battle between the believers and the dragon. We have to realise this. Christmas (and for that matter, the Christian religion) is not about peace and living in a land of milk and honey. Christmas started a battle which is continuing up to this day.
But there is one bright light at the end of the tunnel: The battle’s end has already been determined. The battle will continue until the day when Jesus comes again, but there is no doubt about the outcome – the dragon has already been defeated. And this is our comfort and also our peace. We don’t need to live in fear any longer of our defeated enemy!

What are readers looking for on this blog?

One of the neat things of WordPress, the engine I use for my blog, is the statistics. Some of the things which I regularly follow on the Blog Stats page, are what people are searching for which leads them to this blog, from which blogs people are referred to this blog and which posts are read the most.
Search terms (those that people use in Google) which regularly come up include topics such as “Missions and giving”, “Should all tithes go to the local church”, “David Bosch”, “Glenn Schwarz”, “John Rowell”, “Hands and feet of Christ”, “Missions in Swaziland” and “HIV/AIDS”.
When I started with this blog I was really wondering how effective it would be. To find that quite a number of people get to read the blog because they had landed there by coincidence is quite encouraging.
It is also great to see that other blogs refer to this blog from time to time or have it on their blog roll. Blogs from which people regularly link to my own blog include Chai time, Meditations on the Law, Money Missions, My Contemplations, Greetings from Kyiv and Everyday Christ. Each of these blogs are busy with their own topic, but ultimately we are all doing this because we love the Lord and we love to see God’s Kingdom advancing on earth. Before I started with blogging, I read a book written by Brian Bailey on The Blogging Church. One of the things he wrote and which I took to heart is that bloggers need not be afraid to refer readers to other blogs. I don’t have the book with me, so I’m just writing from memory, but what he said boiled down to the fact that many bloggers selfishly try and keep their readers for themselves and this is actually counter-productive. By unselfishly linking to other blogs, readers become increasingly aware of your own blog. I’ve seen this happen myself when I look at my blog stats and find that someone had linked to my blog from another blog that I have never heard of. In most cases I immediately have a look at that blog myself and very often I add that blog on Bloglines in order to be notified of any updates on that blog.
Lastly and probably the most interesting, is to see the list of posts which the most people read. The nine most read posts over the past 30 days are the following:

1. Our Experience of Culture Shock
2. When Charity destroys Dignity – Glenn Schwarz
3. The Great Commission of Matthew 28
4. Celebrities involved in AIDS programs
5. Should all tithings be channelled through the local church
6. Influence of TV-Evangelists on church in Africa
7. Connecting to God
8. The Three-Selves Formula
9. Demon-possession in Africa

Keeping an eye on the most-read topics will help me in the future to know what to write about. And it is also interesting to see the diverse topics which people are interested in when it comes to missions.
Well, there’s still a lot to write about. I may not post every day during the festive season but then, on the other hand, I really enjoy writing about the topics which I am really passionate about, so chances are that I’ll just continue when I have time.

Joyeux Noël / Merry Christmas

Earlier today we watched the movie Joyeux Noël. (Hey, I’m on leave, so I’m entitled to watch some movies
Joyeux Noël is based on an historical event which happened on 24 December 1914 when the French, the English and the Germans, who were at war with each other and were fighting from trenches during the First World War agreed to a cease-fire on Christmas eve. I’ve heard of this remarkable event before and have even used it as an illustration in a sermon. When I heard that an excellent movie had been made about this, I tried my best to find a copy of the movie, but failed. And then last night I read that the movie was going to be screened on a French cable TV channel and I recorded it to watch it today. Ok, this wasn’t quite as easy as it sounds, because the dialogue was partially in English (which I understand 100%), partially in German (which I understand about 10%) and mostly in French (which I understand about 1%) – and to top it all, the movie made use of subscripts – all in French! (I was able to locate an English copy today which I have now ordered to fill in all the little pieces where we had to guess what was going on.)
On 24 December 1914, as the soldiers were lying in the bitter cold in their filthy trenches, the Germans started singing Christmas carols (in the movie the English soldiers start singing, but apparently this isn’t correct.) Then the soldiers from the other countries also started singing along from their trenches. Eventually they all got out of their trenches and met each other on no-man’s land where they sang together. Then the English chaplain served mass to all the soldiers. On Christmas day they maintained the cease-fire and even arranged a soccer game between the opposing countries. This went on throughout the day after which they all returned to their own trenches and the war proceeded! But those soldiers could never be the same again.
Many of the soldiers were court-martialed because of subordination. The priest who had served the communion was also disciplined by his church for serving the mass to the enemy. What amazed me was that the church as well as the army leaders were unable to recognise the miracle which had taken place on that day – that the message which the angels had given to the shepherds, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men, wasn’t just a dream or a pie in the sky. On Christmas eve in 1914, God proved that Jesus really was the Prince of Peace.
The movie left me with a feeling of hope. Many of the things going wrong in the world (and probably in the church as well) are caused by leaders who are more interested in their own positions and more concerned to promote their own causes than in doing that which will be to the benefit of the people or the world. But at some point people will start seeing the senselessness of things that are wrong and they will attempt to change it. Then we will also be able to experience the promise of peace that God gave us.
But the movie also created an extreme sense of sadness realising that during wars, very often, brothers are fighting brothers (in Christ) – mostly without even realising it.
I think that this will be one of the movies that I will be viewing more than once to really experience the impact of this story. If you are interested in getting a copy yourself, you can find an English copy here.

Sin and redemption

My wife and I just watched the Swedish movie, As it is in Heaven. I’ve long been much more interested in European movies (so-called “art” movies”) rather than the thousands of predictable movies reaching our shelves from Hollywood. (And just to prove that I’m not biassed against Hollywood, I can say that, with the exception of a handful of excellent movies made in South Africa, I consider those made in my own country as some of the worst movies ever made!) It’s rather that I’ve reached the point in my life where I really try and choose the movies I watch, reading reviews on movies (http://www.imdb.com is excellent for this purpose) and then making a choice on what I want to see and what not.
In any case: This afternoon we watched As it is in Heaven. It’s great! If you haven’t seen it yet, try and get a copy somewhere. It’s fairly long and it has subscripts (the dialogue being in Swedish) but anyone interested in something more than the normal action movies, should be touched by this movie.
In one scene in the movie, Inger, the pastor’s wife, makes the remark towards her husband, Stig: “I have thought. The church invented sin. Handing out guilt with one hand then offering redemption with the other. It’s all a lie, hot air, to suppress people, to gain power.” Stig responds in anger: “Silence! Ask for God’s forgiveness!” Inger then turns around and says: “God doesn’t forgive, don’t you get that? Because He’s never condemned.”
Of course what Inger says isn’t the truth. The church never invented sin. The church doesn’t need sin in order to offer redemption. God does condemn sin. But this isn’t the point. This is Inger’s perception of how the church reacts towards people in need of grace. And I think Inger’s accusation may be true. I have seen churches debating for hours on end whether something is sinful or not. Now, I’m not arguing that sin should be ignored. Far from it! But what I am arguing for is that the church becomes the instrument of God’s mercy and love in the world so that all people, who are all in need of God’s redemption, would be able to recognise God’s love by looking at the church, rather than fearing condemnation when they see the image of the church.
I have mentioned it before that, when I arrived in Swaziland, the church had a number of sins which they regarded as very, very bad sins – things such as smoking, using alcohol, women using makeup, women wearing trousers and a number of other things. Surprisingly, pregnancy out of wedlock were not included in the list of sins! But this, in my mind, is the typical mistake made by the church – that certain issues are emphasised while others are ignored and that people’s spiritual lives are then evaluated according to this.
The truth is that we are all in need of redemption. We are all in need of God’s mercy. Sin – not just a number of individual things which we do wrong, but rather sin as the total onslaught against God – is a reality from which we need to be saved. This is what Jesus had come to do for us. And this is the message that we need to proclaim in the world.
Constantly working with people infected with HIV and knowing that by far the majority of them became infected because of immorality (sin!) have forced me to look at these people with other eyes. We had the choice to proclaim a message of condemnation upon all those infected with HIV and AIDS. But that would have made little if any difference. Or we could have done what we chose to do, to become instruments in the hands of God to proclaim His love and grace to these people. I’m not saying that all of these people are going to be saved. But I do believe that more will accept God’s grace after seeing it demonstrated in a practical way by the church, than would accept it after hearing a message of condemnation.
We don’t need to hand out guilt in order to offer redemption. We need to hand out love in order for people to accept redemption.

Contextualising the gospel

I’m through with David Bosch’s book. Actually I’m supposed to be on leave and should have much more time for reading, but I’m still involved with some issues taking up my time. In any case, I will be returning to a number of things he wrote which really meant something to me. Close to the end of the book Bosch wrote about the contextualisation of the gospel, specifically in the West. He argues that most missionaries had done a fairly decent job of contextualising the gospel in the third world countries where they work, but that it seems as if the same may not apply to the West. Or, alternatively, that the job had been done too well in the West.
Why is it that in many Western countries people are turning their back on the gospel? Why is it that Europe, from which our spiritual forefathers had come (in our case in Southern Africa, from the Netherlands and from France) has itself become a place which needs to be evangelised again. This is the question which Bosch asks. And the answer he gives on the one hand is that the church may wrongly have felt that the gospel had been properly contextualised and indigenised in the West, while in fact this may not be the truth. Or the alternative solution he offers (and which may very well be the real reason) is that it had been overcontextualised, so that the gospel of Jesus Christ lost its distinctive character and challenge.
I, and many (although definitely not all) of those reading this, grew up in a so-called Christian country. Even Swaziland, where I am presently situated, is known as a Christian country. Close to 80% of the country, according to Operation World, are Christians. But we all know that this is not the truth, not, that is, if we consider Christians as people who have made Jesus Christ the King of their lives and not merely those who are not antagonistic towards Christianity.
I grew up in South Africa in a time when we were led to believe that all the country’s leaders are Christians (pre-1994). Almost all political speeches referred directly or indirectly to the faith of the leaders and we honestly thought that the policy of Apartheid was the only way in which it could be ensured that the country would remain Christian. Most probably this is an indication of the overcontextualisation of the gospel.
Bosch, as far as I know, coined the phrase of the church as alternative society. When the gospel becomes so integrated with secular society (or government), that it becomes difficult to distinguish between the two, then I believe that we may have overcontextualised the gospel. But is may also mean that we have not contextualised the gospel enough, thereby indicating to Christians how they should be different from the world.
Bosch ends the paragraph by saying that he himself is unsure exactly how we should go about addressing this issue, but it is becoming increasingly important to reflect on this issue.

Focussing on Easter to bring back the Christmas spirit

I’m not in the United States to understand all that is happening there, but what I can follow is that huge supermarkets, such as Wal-Mart, forbid its employees to wish customers “Merry Christmas” and rather to wish them “Happy Holidays”. Yesterday, one of the blogs which I constantly follow, wrote about this topic, which you can read here.
On December 13, 1993, Christianity Today published an article in which they warned that Christmas was not being ruled from Jerusalem or Rome or Wheaton or any other religious center, but from Madison Avenue and Wall Street. It is time, the article argues, for Christians to recognise this.
The controversy in the United States about the law forbidding customers to be wished a merry Christmas obviously unchained a lot of emotions amongst certain Christians. But after reading about this the first time, I asked myself the question whether this was really bad. In another article in Christianity Today, the author writes that it is not only Christmas being celebrated during December. Those of the Jewish religion are also celebrating Hanukkah, the feast of lights. How can an employee be expected to wish someone a merry Christmas who does not believe that the Messiah’s birth is being commemorated? And what right do Christians have to claim the holiday season for themselves, thinking that commercial businesses, who by definition exist to make a profit, should neglect their non-Christian customers or offend them by wishing them a “merry Christmas”?
The article reports: One organization is selling bumper stickers that read, “This is America! And I’m going to say it: Merry Christmas!” and “Merry Christmas! An American Tradition” to which the author adds, tongue in the cheek: I don’t remember the American part of the Christmas story, but I haven’t re-read Luke 2 yet this year.
South Africa went through a similar phase when the Day of Ascension was no longer a religious holiday. Christians were up in arms about this and commented about the anti-Christian government in South Africa targeting Christian religious holidays. Most churches responded by arranging for special church services to be held on the evening of the Day of Ascension. Ironically, these services are usually poorly attended, which makes one think that the issue for most people calling themselves Christians may not be the Day of Ascension as such, but rather indignation that a holiday had been taken away from them.
Which brings me back to the Christmas issue. If we want to bring back the true Christian spirit of Christmas, then we will have to focus on Easter. The gospels of Mark and John do not even relate the birth of Jesus. But all four gospels focus on the death and resurrection of Jesus. And when the first Christians started spreading the message, we find them mainly preaching about Jesus who had been crucified and who had arisen from the dead.
I’m not sure how Easter is celebrated in other countries, but in South Africa this is, next to Christmas, the biggest holiday season (and ironically, also the time when, except for Christmas, the most people are killed in vehicle accidents.)
Easter isn’t a time of shopping or decorations. People are not being wished a “happy Easter”. But for Christians this should be the biggest feast on their calendar. Only by celebrating the death and resurrection of Jesus in a proper Christian way, can the true spirit of Christmas be reclaimed.

Short-term Outreaches (6)

Exactly one day after previously posting (once again!) some thoughts on short-term outreaches, an article appeared in Christianity Today’s electronic version about the same topic. You can read it here.
What amazed me of this article that the author was reporting on a short-term outreach by a group of young people from a church in Nairobi, Kenya, and they had just returned from a short-term outreach to India.
When we think of short-term outreaches, then we see in our mind’s eye a group of people from some affluent church in the United States or Canada or another Western country going to some third-world country in Africa or Asia. I admit – this is also how I see it. What this article clearly illustrated was that mission outreaches are no longer the privilege of Western countries. Christians in third-world countries are increasingly going to reach out to the world to proclaim the Kingdom of God in other countries. In the book of David Bosch which I am reading at present, he says that third-world countries have no distinction between theology and the theology of missions as it is found in Western churches. I’ll write more about this at a later stage. Read against the background of this article in Christianity Today, it makes sense that Christians from third-world countries may become more and more involved in short-term outreaches.
The other surprising thing in this article was to see how the African Christians struggled with the cultural differences which they experienced in India. The food, the heat, the humidity – all the things which we as Western Christians would find difficult to adapt to – were issues which the Christians from Kenya also struggled with. Somehow we tend to think that people from third-world countries, regardless of where they are situated, would easily adapt in another third-world country. But evidently, this is not so. Regardless of where you work, you will be stretched culturally if you leave your own comfort zone behind.
But the main reason why this article touched me, was because it absolutely emphasised what I had written in my own post about thinking long-term if we go on short-term outreaches. The article says: A friend’s church recently sent a second short-term team to serve alongside Christians in a small, materially poor town in Central America they had visited the previous summer. They were overwhelmed, and taken aback, when their hosts tearfully told them on the last night of their visit, “We have had American Christians visit us before. But none of them ever returned. We thought that God had forgotten us.”
A short-tern outreach can have a tremendously positive influence in a country and amongst local Christians. But we need to think of long-term consequences and responsibilities when we start planning to go on an outreach, otherwise we may break down a lot of trust.

What do we have to become Christians for?

I am presently reading a book of David Bosch which was published after his untimely death in April 1992. David Bosch was one of the external examiners for my PhD and as far as I know I was the last student he examined before he died. I was therefore very surprised when my eldest son (going for his final year in theological studies) brought my attention to a book entitled Believing in the Future. In this book of 61 pages he speaks about missions within a Western culture.
One of the questions he asks is: What do we have to become Christians for? In Western culture, according to Bosch, Christianity had been marked by two distinct responses. The one was the attempt to Christianise culture and ultimately the state. Christians wanted therefore to have everything which happened to be measured against the norms set down by the Bible and what they believe in. In essence, this is what Islam does, where there is little distinction between religion and the state and where the laws in the Kor’an determine the laws of the state. Although there are many Christians who propagate such a Christian state, Bosch describes this as little other than a fantasy of the “religious right”.
The other response, according to him, is much more real and may, in my opinion, perhaps be even more devastating than the first response, and that is to withdraw from public life altogether. In these cases Christians focus solely on “religious” aspects, leaving the rest to the secular powers. According to these people, religion is a private affair and has nothing to do with the public sphere.
What do we have to become Christians for? The question is relevant. If the answer is merely because we want to be saved from eternal punishment, then we do not understand at all how God cares for the world. Bosch then writes: At least part of the answer to this question will have to be: “In order to be enlisted into God’s ministry of reconciliation, peace and justice on earth.”
In an earlier post I wrote that Christianity is not a religion. Bosch says virtually the same when he writes that there is already very much religion in Western society. What we do not need then, is to introduce more religion. The issue is not to talk more about God in a culture that has become irreligious, but how to express, ethically, the coming of God’s reign, how to help people respond to the real questions of their context, how to break with the paradigm according to which religion has to do only with the private sphere.
In a sermon, one Sunday morning, I mentioned the then popular “bumper stickers”, one of which read: Jesus is the answer. To which I responded by saying in my sermon: If Jesus is the answer, what is the question?
I think the world may be tired of hearing that Jesus is the answer. It’s time that they see that He is the answer. And this is our responsibility as Christians.

Coming to terms with cultural differences

About a month ago a young Christian form the USA joined our ministry in Swaziland as a volunteer to assist us mainly in our HIV/AIDS projects. His name is Tim Deller. One of the fun things that I experienced with him was to see him getting used to the new culture. Much of what I had said in earlier posts about my personal experience of culture shock proved to be true with him as well – mainly that I don’t see him experiencing severe culture shock. It would be extremely difficult to try and explain why he is going through the process easier than many other people I know. Probably it has a lot to do with his personality (very positive and outgoing). It may have a lot to do with the fact that he seems to yearn to learn from the Swazi people. And I think it also has a lot to do with the fact that he has learnt to laugh at things which do not make much sense.
In his last newsletter he wrote:
I’m Not an Idiot
I now have proof that I’m not an idiot. I need a medical clearance for a residence permit in Swaziland. So, this week I went to a doctor’s office to complete the Swaziland form. The certificate reads:
“I hereby certify that I have examined Timothy Deller and find that he is not mentally or physically defective in any way, … that he is not an idiot, epileptic, insane, mentally deficient, … and that he is not suffering from leprosy, tuberculosis, or trachoma.”
You might wonder what this examination consisted of. They took my blood pressure, charged me 60 Emalangeni (approx $10), and signed the form. Welcome to Africa.
I know a great number of people who would get so frustrated when things like this happen. Others will be furious. Others will make bad remarks about the country hosting them. A few will come to terms with the cultural differences and they will be really happy.
My natural personality is such that I am usually in a bit of a hurry. Standing in queues is more or less one of the worst things that can happen to me. But I realised a strange thing many years ago. As soon as I cross the border from South Africa into Swaziland it is as if I engage another gear or move into a different mode. There is very little in Swaziland that happens fast. Going to a bank or to the post office can become a nightmare. A few months ago disaster struck Swaziland when the border posts were computerised
One can fight the system, but will never change the system and the only result will be that one will be constantly unhappy / frustrated / angry – most probably all three together. Or one can learn to come to terms with the differences, smile, be friendly and somewhere along the line bear witness to the love of God.
Reading Tim’s letter again, I thought it ironic that some people are certified idiots. As far as I know it is only in Swaziland that one can be certified as a non-idiot!

Short-term Outreaches (5)

Bob Roberts starts one paragraph in his book, Glocalization, with the heading: Stop Thinking Short Term. Frankly, I was a bit disappointed when reading this, because I sincerely believe that short-term outreaches are beneficial in more than one way. Do a search on my blog for short-term and you will find a number of places where I shared my thoughts on this topic – many of them very positive.
It was only after I read the paragraph that I grasped what he was trying to say and this made me excited, because he was saying what I also firmly believe, just using other words in which to describe it. He writes: Stop thinking of short-term trips! Instead, think of global business, education, health, art, and so on.
If I understand him correctly, the problem with many people going on short-term outreaches, is that they only focus on that specific trip. The trip is their goal, the single visit to the foreign country is their vision. Returning from that trip, they have accomplished their goal and can concentrate on a new goal.
For short-term outreaches to be really effective, we need to have another vision and another goal. The short-term outreach then becomes one of the methods in which we achieve our goal. Does this make sense? Instead of just concentrating on getting a team together and handling all the logistics in order for the outreach to take place, we need to be better focussed on what we are intending to do in the country that we plan to visit. How are we going to get involved on the long term in order to influence the ministry and country which we intend to support in a more permanent way. One of the ways in which to do this would then be a short-term outreach, possibly undertaken annually, but always with the intention of reaching a greater goal than only undertaking the trip.
I can think of a number of reasons why people are not always keen to do things this way. Many of those going on short-term outreaches are naturally adventurous and to go back to the same place year after year may seem very boring after a while. Churches also seem to be reluctant to make long term commitments. Could this be because of small faith? I’m not always sure why, but I see very few churches really able to commit themselves to a long term relationship with a church in another country or within another community. Another reason may well be because churches do not always know why they are going on a short-term outreach.
Having received scores of short-term outreach groups in Swaziland over the past 23 years and having experienced the good and the bad of these trips, I believe that there are ways in which these trips could be planned to have a more lasting effect. Prior communication, and by this I mean in depth discussions, is essential. I have had groups coming to visit where the discussions beforehand consisted mainly on issues such as sleeping and cooking facilities. I have also had teams coming to visit where long discussions were held on what they could expect, how they could become involved, what the real needs are, sometimes even preceded by a visit from one or two leaders to see for themselves how the team should be prepared.
Yet, in spite of proper preparation, the majority of these short-term outreaches take place once and then very little happens afterwards.
I therefore absolutely agree that we need to think long term. Which all boils down (again) to the issue of relationships between Christians from different backgrounds and the willingness to get truly involved with each other.